Group Documentary - Critical Reflection

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Critical Reflection

It's time for some critical reflection. Me and Nikita chose a topic that affected almost everyone, addressing an environmental issue. When we were interviewing Cooper we wanted to talk about how thrifting can be the only way to get affordable clothes for people in certain financial situations, and how more poor quality fast fashion clothes makes it harder for them to get high quality clothes. We touched on that aspect but there were some parts that didn't make the final cut. We approached the environmental aspect of the doc from an informational standpoint, giving facts and statistics from credible sources. But for the fast fashion part of it, we took a stance, stating how it negatively affects the environment. 

We first engaged audiences by asking a rhetorical question for the audience that the interviewees on screen were answering, and then giving the audience the true answer. We didn't want the informational segment to be boooooring, so Nikita made animations that correlated to some of the statistics. Then in the interview segment, we engage the audience by making a more "news segment esque" part, presenting a relatable subject who was knowledgeable regarding the topic at hand. Then, at the end, we engaged the audience by presenting them with a reminder. I wouldn't call it a call to action cuz its not as actiony. We didn't want to have a gloomy tone, since the subject matter was already gloomy if you thought about it enough. So we went with a more friendly reminder, before nikita vanished from the screen and the credits rolled. We ended the piece with Nikita interviewing a gorilla statue, asking the same question as the question asked in the beginning. We included this to leave our audience with a smile on their faces, and a reminder that despite how bad things are, there are still silly and fun aspects of our world.

Our research was heavily relied on during the first segment in our documentary, since it was the informational bit. We didn't want to stray too far from the conventions of documentaries and news segments, since it was a familiar thing to the both of us. Me and Nikita are both well versed in the CBTV style of storytelling. One big leap we took was that green screen segment. Neither of us had ever done something like that, and I think it came out alright for a first attempt at that kind of thing. Another convention we challenged was the previously mentioned gloominess of documentaries of similar premises. As a filmmaker, my main goal is to make people happy with my work. Even if every other aspect misses the mark, a laugh from the crowd can be fulfilling. And I think we found a good balance between funny positive and locked in and informative. 

The End

Group Documentary - Post Production

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Post Production

So the way post production went was first, Nikita edited together his stand up segment, which involved putting himself behind a green screen background, editing the lines together, and animating graphics and adding pictures. We should have been more collaborative when it came to doing this part, because I felt hesitant to ask for anything to be changed since he had already exported it. If we had sat down together we could have gotten our ideas done well. One thing I wish we had done was put nikita behind a moving background, rather than a still color. Even just a tiny animation would have been visually engaging. 

I don't have much to say about my segments. They were very CBTV esque and weren't very difficult. For a majority of the editing phase I had been working with the camera audio from Cooper's interview. I had forgotten that we recorded audio separately. I didn't notice it until very late because the audio quality was surprisingly good for a camera, but the mic was so much better. Im very glad I noticed it. I found it challenging to find archived footage that didn't have graphics over them already, which led to some archived videos not being great.  As Im writing this I wonder if there is a website where you can find good archived footage. I found this website ------>pond5, which didn't have footage that I could've used for this, but it does boast an impressive library, which could be useful for future projects. 

uhhh what else is there. i think thats it byee!!!!

also elf is a good christmas movie idc

Group Documentary - Production

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Production

DAY 1: 

wow pretty sky

It was the first day of filming. I started my day by doing some watercolor painting and it was very relaxing. Then around one o'clock I drove over to nikita's house, picked him up, and then went to cooper's house, and then left for the thrift store. The sky was very pretty that day. In terms of equipment, we brought 2 cameras (one belonging to nikita, and one belonging to CBTV) a light kit, (which we ended up not using, more on that later) a tripod, and a clip-on mic. 

Once we got there we spoke with the people working there, and then started the interview with Cooper. The music in the store was VERY loud so we decided to shoot it outside. But the walls were glass windows so the clothing was still visible. The interview went well, the footage was a bit blue but I got it looking alright in post.  We then went inside to get b-roll. It was mostly Cooper looking through racks of clothes. There were a lot of little trinkets around the store so we were able to get some cool footage. 

Once we finished shooting I found a cool dragon ball z shirt and i bought it. Then as we were driving home, I took a wrong turn. But we found a Raising Canes so we ate lunch there. It was packed! I got the 3 finger combo with a sweet tea. The meal was good but the sweet tea wasn't great. My favorite sweet tea is the publix one 😋😋😋. Then we dropped off Nikita and me and Cooper went to my friend Jaime's birthday party which was super fun!

DAY 2:

This day was my birthday!!! Me and Nikita had to get the street interviews for the first part of the doc. We went to Weston Town Center and got a good amount of interviews. It was kind of chilly out. The wind was a bit audible in the footage, but I think it added to the "street-ness" of it, if that makes sense. Then we went back to Nikita's house to film the intended ending of the doc. It didn't end up working out because we had intended to go to goodwill to film the second half of it, but it was too far. away to fit in with our schedules. I recently realized we could have filmed it in front of those donation bins that are around 😵‍💫. But whatever, the one we did instead wasn't too bad. Nikita filmed that one on his own, so if you wanna hear about that, you gotta read his blog. 

DAY 3:

This was the last day of filming (with both me and Nikita working together). We got permission with Mr Cummings the TV teacher to record stuff in the studio where they film the morning show. There was a green screen there we used. My inspiration for this segment was a Neil Degrasse Tyson video where he talks about time travel and the speed of light, but I cannot find it. But the thing I liked about it was how he would gesture to an area of the screen and a thingy would pop up. That was something that Nikita did on his own, so go read his blog. 

And that's it for filming!!!👍

Group Documentary: Pre-Production

 Midterm Posts

Pre-Production

So, the date was sometime last month, and me and Nikita (my fellow documentarian) were brainstorming what to do for our documentary. I was kinda hungry so my first thought was to make it about food, specifically the struggling mom n pop shops in America. But after some research we determined it would be difficult to do. We then thought of what current issues there were, and we eventually landed on fast fashion. We decided our premise should be about how thrifting can combat fast fashion's negative effects on our planet. We then whipped together a crude planning sheet (which we later fixed after some constructive criticism from Ms. Stoklosa) 

LINK TO THE THINGY HERE!!!!

We looked at various thrift stores around and eventually landed on SYZN Thrift for various reasons:

-it wasn't too far

-the store was very colorful (as opposed to goodwill, which is very grey)

-it seemed like we'd have better chances of getting permission to film cuz i'd been there before and the people were pretty laid back

-they have cool stuff

-there's a raising canes nearby😋

Then I contacted a couple of my friends who are big thrifters asking if they wanted to come and do an interview. My good friend Cooper said yes and we planned to film on a saturday. In the meantime, Nikita and I solidified our plan, wrote questions for Cooper, and worked on getting the structure of the documentary down. We divided it into 3 segments: The Beginning: Introducing the topic, Middle: Explaining the problem, and the End: offering a solution (thrifting). We also established what each of us was gonna do in terms of post production. Nikita was going to make the green screen stand up segment, and I was going to put all the stuff together. 

Discussion of documentaries watched in class

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Class Viewed Documentaries

ABSTRACT: COSTUME DESIGN

I thought this one was cool. Me n nikita were inspired by this one to make our documentary an episode from a hypothetical series. The animated segments were cool. It was also very good at storytelling. I enjoyed how it did so much more than just explaining what costume design was. It told the story of the costume designers life, and how she moved through the industry, designing costumes. 

ABSTRACT: TOY DESIGN

I liked this one too!!! Everything I said I liked about the last one carries over to this one. I thought the topic was super interesting and way more deep than i expected it to be.

AMERICAN PROMISE

I thought this one was very unique, it's not often you see a film span across such a large amount of time. It was a great exploration of public vs private school and the pressures that come with both. It was also very emotionally investing. 

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP
I liked this one soooo much. I love just hearing people's stories, and that's exactly what this is. I found it very engaging watching Thierry tag along with all the different artists, and the piece as a whole was a fun window into the era it is documenting. It also raised many interesting questions, most notably being "what makes art art? Many of my peers argued that Thierry's seemingly surface level works of art didn't count as "real" art because Thierry didn't make any statements through it. But I believe that Thierry's work is done because it makes him happy and gives it meaning. I see Thierry's art like if someone was doodling in the margins of their notebook in class, and then the media went on to go crazy over it. It's not Thierry's fault that audiences attached meaning to art without it. I think Thierry's art can be more meaningful than art with more apparent meaning in some cases.